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Sydney tech startup Brainfish, an AI-powered customer support platform for online businesses, has raised US$2.5 million ($3.85 million) in its second funding round that has been backed by the CEO of MadPaws (ASX: MPA) Justus Hammer and a suite of angel investors in Australia and the US.
The latest round, led by Peak XV Partners’ Surge with participation from Macdoch Ventures and Black Sheep Capital, pushes total capital raised by the startup to $5 million in the past 12 months.
The funds will be used by Brainfish to drive product innovation and accelerate its international expansion plans.
Brainfish, founded by in April last year by former SiteMinder product builders Daniel Kimber and Ajain Vivek Thankaswamy, has experienced 65 per cent month-on month growth since its launch.
The platform enables companies to resolve customer queries in real-time, providing a superior customer support experience while saving businesses the time involved in servicing those enquiries.
Brainfish currently services more than 300,000 users globally across software companies and marketplaces, among them ASX-listed companies Airtasker (ASX: ART) and Mad Paws – with the customer relationship attracting the interest of Hammer as an investor.
Beyond Australia, the platform is currently operating the US and Singapore with plans by Brainfish to expand its offshore base further.
Kimber, the Brainfish CEO, is aged just 25 and has been running code since he was 15. His rapid rise in the sector has seen the young entrepreneur work with SiteMinder, twin-platform Willow and food ordering and payment app me&u prior to establishing Brainfish.
“We started Brainfish with the mission to alleviate the frustrations of the support experience and provide customers with the technology to solve their own problems,” says Kimber.
“Our AI-first platform does just that. The market has responded incredibly well to our product in its first year, and we’re firmly focused on growth to continue redefining the customer support landscape.”
Brainfish’s proprietary AI search function is said to combines a business's knowledge “with contextual understanding of the customer to deliver personalised answers instantaneously’.
The startup says that through its technology, companies can handle large volumes of customer queries with efficiency and quality.
Kimber notes that customer support “hasn’t changed in decades” and that Brainfish is aiming to change this.
“Whilst tooling is better, people today want quick answers that are accurate and contextualised,” he says.
“With the backing of the Peak XV team, we’re able to continue pushing the boundaries of customer support and save businesses countless hours by delivering a superior product that works from the very top of the customer funnel. Bad bot answers just won’t suffice anymore.”
Peak XV, formerly Sequoia Capital’s Indian and South-East Asian arm prior to a three-way split of Sequoia last year, manages more than US$9 billion ($13.6 billion) in capital across 13 funds and invested in more than 400 companies.
The group’s Surge division is a rapid-scale-up program which is aimed at supercharging early-stage startups in India and South-East Asia.
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